Huwag Na Tayo Mag-Coffee, Dear

( letting off steam after a disturbing day in the sickbed. Sept. 11.)

Never mind that their overall advertising concept of this certain transnational food and beverage's TV coffee commercial was amusingly incoherent to begin with. Its sound byte, Lupit Ever, struck me with an irony more potent and bitter than kapeng barako.

'Lupit ever. Their ad agency certainly got that one right.

Lupit ever, coincidentally, is the exact phrase to describe how striking Nestle workers have been systematically deprived of ample wages, benefits, and job security over the years by the management. Lupit ever best describes how their picket lines have been violently harassed by the police and military for years. Lupit ever is the most perfect way to describe how workers and union leaders such as Diosdado “Ka Fort' Fortuna were treacherously murdered by unknown assailants without a fair fight.

Like the irony of the phrase lupit ever, Ka Fort was felled by assassins' bullets while on his way home last September 22, a day after joining the rally held in commemoration of Martial Law's declaration. This was a tragedy that is alarming, but not surprising, considering the exponential rate at which activists are being killed, abducted, and harassed under GMA's calibrated political repression.

I never had the chance to personally meet Ka Fort, Nestle union President and Anakpawis Southern Tagalog Chairperson. But whenever I realize how heavy his loss is for my colleagues in Anakpawis, who shared political discussions, jokes, and songs with him, I recall how it is to lose friends who have been mercilessly killed for their principles, and try to contribute my paltry share by writing and raging against injustice.

We seek retribution in its most concrete terms. I think the unions are justified in asserting that Nestle certainly deserves the blow of an all-out consumers boycott, if only to show them that workers represented by Ka Fort should never be treated with impunity. And I look forward to the day when the killers and the cold-blooded masterminds, most probably from the military, are jailed or strapped one by one (in alphabetical or chronological order, or preferably by height) to a fully-functional electric chair.

But no amount of mega-profits lost nor prison sentences meted can really replace the loss of brave people such as Ka Fort. It only takes a single bullet to kill a man, but an entire lifetime of struggle to mold one into leaders like him who will dare to truly serve the people.

If I only knew the cellphone numbers of those scum behind the killing, I'd shout over the line: you blasted low-lives, you can smirk, raise your coffee cups in triumph, and shout 'Perfection!' (like in the ad), but you won't have the last laugh. Nobody will flock to your funerals in the same way that people flooded Ka Fort's wake and even spilled out on the street. Nobody will remember you whenever they rage against oppression, anytime and anywhere in the world. Nobody will ever affirm your humanity, not even in death.

In my weaker moments, I try to cope with the numbing senselessness of it all with sedated, insane sarcasm. Sometimes I try to delude myself into theorizing that maybe, just maybe, the commercials irony was an intentional critique after all. A sneaky slap back by some sympathetic artist or ad exec working backstage. What more innocuous way to instill the message that this entire state of crisis and sham democracy is really 'lupit 'ever' in the minds of Filipino consumers, than through the subconscious conditioning and repetitiveness of big-time advertising? It must have been a clever strategy to subtly subvert and unmask the hegemony of empire, to have the phrase televissed to millions of viewers for every ten minutes or so: lupit ever, lupit ever, oh indeed, LUPIT EVER!

Hah! Yeah, right. And I'm the Queen of Encantadia. Or the sugo, for that matter.

If only the news reports on Ka Fort's murder and the workers struggles for justice and their rights were just as prominent and sustained as those darned commercials. If only TV stations would air adsr those who wonder (or don't even know) why TNC workers and activists like Ka Fort are killed. If only newspapers issued warnings to all young, clueless rebels who like to write careless things like “if i like the packaging, i like the product”. If only commercials told truths, not inanities. I'd like to see the day when something like this is given big-time air-time:

Have a break, there's blood in your cappuccino and chocolate wafer bars. There's blood in your fresh full-cream milk and pretty-pink strawberry ice cream. Taste each product: there's blood, shame, and guilt dripping out of every drop. Bite into them. Snack on bullets and bones of dead workers. Indulge in the melting flesh of their hungry children. Feed this to your loved ones every day. Let them savor and be nourished by the bitterness of tears, bile, and sweat.

I don't think people should find this repulsive or morbid, when so much real-life odiousness lies behind the pretty packaging of products, when so many ugly realities are obscured by the onslaught of commercials. Such systematic violence is senseless and incomprehensible only to the naïve: the bloodshed and oppression is very, very rational, according to the rapacious logic of Capital and fascism. Which is why I still can't help but very consistently and very, very bitterly mutter back, whenever I chance upon that absurd TV commercial filled with coffee-drinking wackos: 'Lupit 'ever talaga!

BOYCOTT NESTLE PRODUCTS. PLEASE.